Email Tips: Thirteen Epistles Alone

In the 16th century Protestants had the courage of taking a step toward Biblical Christianity by protesting the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church.

The Romans taught scripture, faith, grace, Christ, and glory to God, but it was their additions to the truth that corrupted those doctrines.

The Protestants were not just proclaiming “grace” and “faith”, but “grace alone” and “faith alone”. Their protests are summarized by five statements (popularly these statements begin with the Latin word sola meaning alone).

These Protestant pillars were an attempt to rightly divide truth from additions that had corrupted and confused the Biblical doctrines. Let the truth stand alone!

For the church to function properly today there needs to be one more statement of right division.
“The gospel, message, and mystery of the church today is found in Paul’s epistles alone.”

Without this “alone” statement, the Protestant denominations quickly return to Roman doctrinal error by adding the red letters, Pentecost, and the Hebrew epistles as a pattern for the church today.

The same fate awaits grace churches that teach Paul, but do not teach our pattern and message found in Paul’s epistles alone. It is prevalent to include the Hebrew epistles and the gospel of John (Bereans), or exclude Paul’s early epistles (Acts 28ers, et al).

We should applaud the right steps made by those who have gone before us, but avoid their missteps by establishing this simple statement.

If our continued protest of confused churchianity will succeed it will be by finding the pattern for the church in Paul’s thirteen epistles alone.